Faulk happy to stay with Patriots
March 11, 2010
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP)—New England Patriots running back Kevin Faulk(notes) didn’twant to go out like Nomar Garciaparra.
Watching the former Boston Red Sox All-Star shortstop retire on Wednesdayhelped convince Faulk that he wanted to spend his entire career with thePatriots. So Faulk re-signed with the Patriots, the team that made him asecond-round draft choice in 1999 and the only team he’s ever played for. Termsof the deal were not disclosed.
“I might have left and gone and it might have been successful, but itwouldn’t have been the same if I would have been here doing it,” he saidThursday in a conference call with reporters, a day after Garciaparra made hisawkward, one-day return to the Red Sox for the purpose of announcing hisretirement.
“What happened with Nomar Garciaparra—it’s great he came back and retireda Red Sox,” Faulk said. “But at the same time if he would have done it here itwould have even been better.”
Faulk, who was an unrestricted free agent, is the longest-tenured member ofthe Patriots. Along with Tom Brady(notes), Matt Light(notes) and Stephen Neal(notes), Faulk was amember of all three Patriots Super Bowl-winning teams.
“You see a lot of guys that come and go in the NFL, that have been with oneteam for a certain amount of years and they’ve left and go make their marksomewhere else,” he said. “But you never hear about a guy in this day and agethat’s been staying for a long time. And it’s just a fact of being in thatorganization and trying to uphold and be consistent.”
Faulk, 33, said he never considered retiring.
And he wasn’t really considering going to another team, either.
“I was always 85 percent sure that I was going to wind up back in NewEngland,” he said. “As a father, a husband I had to think about all of thatbesides just football—what I was going to do, what the family was going tohave to do if I was going to have to leave or not. That was a weighing factor onme, as well.”
Faulk ran for 335 yards and caught 37 passes for 301 yards and scored threetouchdowns last season. He has 3,505 yards rushing and 418 receptions for 3,605yards in his career, and has also returned kicks and punts.
The Patriots also re-signed Neal this week.
Neal, a college wrestler who became the starting guard for a Super Bowlchampion, was part of a line that allowed 18 sacks last season, the team’sfewest since the league switched to a 16-game schedule in 1978.
He has been spending his offseason trying to raise money for the CaliforniaState-Bakersfield wresting team, which is due to be eliminated because of budgetcuts.
On the Net:
http://www.savebakersfieldwrestling.com/